On Nov. 11, 2014, a global network of telescopes picked up signals from 300 million light years away that were created by a tidal disruption flare—an explosion of electromagnetic energy that occurs when a black hole rips ...

Using VST ATLAS and WISE surveys astronomers have identified two new bright high-redshift quasars. The newly found quasi-stellar objects, designated VST-ATLAS J158.6938-14.4211 and VST-ATLAS J332.8017-32.1036, could be helpful ...

A merger between galaxies can trigger can intense radiation from bursts star formation and from the accretion of gas onto the two supermassive black holes at their centers. Astronomers have observed a strong statistical correlation ...

The new MATISSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has now successfully made its first observations at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. MATISSE is the most powerful interferometric instrument ...

Supermassive black holes, which lurk at the heart of most galaxies, are often described as "beasts" or "monsters". But despite this, they are pretty much invisible. To show that they are there at all, astronomers typically ...

Compared to some other galaxies in our Universe, the Milky Way is a rather subtle character. In fact, there are galaxies that are a thousands times as luminous as the Milky Way, owing to the presence of warm gas in the galaxy's ...

A team of astrophysicists and planetary scientists has predicted that Neptune-like planets located near the center of the Milky Way were transformed into rocky planets by outbursts generated by the nearby supermassive black ...

In the 1980s, researchers began discovering extremely bright sources of X-rays in the outer portions of galaxies, away from the supermassive black holes that dominate their centers. At first, researchers thought these cosmic ...

Astronomers reveal a new high resolution map of the magnetic field lines in gas and dust swirling around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy, published in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical ...

Supermassive black hole

A supermassive black hole is a black hole with a mass of the order of between 105 and 1010 solar masses. Most, if not all, galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.

Supermassive black holes have properties which distinguish them from their relatively low-mass cousins: